Types of Insects in Australia

There
are many different types
of insects
in Australia.

Insects are by far the largest and most successful group of
living things on Earth – they represent 90% of all animal species.

The reason for their success is their short life which means quick
generation turnover and quick adaptation to new conditions. They are so
successful that without spiders, it would be hard to keep their
populations under control. In Australian warm climate,
insects grow huge – some are larger than small birds.

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Habitats of the Different Types of Insects in Australia
There are more than 86,000
species of insects described in Australia.
They fill every single habitat from tropical rainforests to cool
mountain areas, deserts, lakes and cities, where they live as
herbivores, carnivores, scavengers and parasites.
Some water bugs live their whole life on the surface of the ocean, some
aquatic midge larvae live in seasonally dry waterholes in temperatures
up to 58Ã‚°C, and some lice live in the waters where the temperatures
are below -2Ã‚°C.

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Different Types of Insects and Butterflies Life Cycle
Because insects haven’t got a vertebrate, they need an exoskeleton to
strengthen their bodies. That exoskeleton doesn’t grow, so when insects
grow out of it, they shed their whole outer skeleton and then grow a
new one. Insects go through different life cycles (e. g. egg, larva,
pupil and adult but there are other combinations), and only in their
last stage, when they are adults, can they reproduce, and in many
species, fly. When they’re adults, they stop growing, so if you see
different sizes of butterflies of the same species for example, this
doesn’t indicate their age but food availability during the immature
stages.

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Different Types of Insects in Australia: Exopterygota
The different types of insects in Australia include the primitive,
wingless silverfish and bristletails; and two large groups of winged
insects: Exopterygota
with species whose nymphs that are similar to the adults, and
Endopterygota with species whose larvae are totally different to the
adults. The first group includes dragonflies and
damselflies (order Odonata), cockroaches (order Blattodea)
that can grow very large, termites (order Isoptera
- termites are misleadingly called “white ants” – evolutionary they’ve
got nothing with ants to do and although termites do have similar
social colony structure with workers, soldiers etc, ants are instead
closely related to bees and wasps); the carnivorous praying
mantids (order Mantodea) with heads so large you
can look right
into their eyes; lice (order Phthiraptera); earwigs
(order Dermaptera);
and crickets and grasshoppers (order Orthoptera) –
the insects
that make the typical sound and some of them plague large areas in
inland. Walking Stick insects and leaf insects (order Phasmatodea)
are the most fantastic large tree-branch or leaf-looking insects that
grow up to 30cm long and make that swinging movement (like praying
mantids) when disturbed to mimic a branch or leaf swinging in the wind.
And then there is the large group of bugs, (order Hemiptera),
with 99 families containing 5650 species including true bugs, cicadas,
water bugs and bed bugs, to name a few.

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Different Types of Insects in Australia: Endopterygota
The second group of the different types of insects in Australia is
Endopterygota, the larvae of which are totally different from the
adults, include lacewings (order Neuroptera);
stylopids (order Strepsiptera);
scorpion flies (order Mecoptera); fleas; and the
large orders
Diptera, Coleoptera, Hymenoptera and Lepidoptera. The order Diptera
includes flies: house flies, march flies, horse flies, mosquitoes,
midges and sandflies to name a few. Coleoptera
is a huge order with 28,200 species of Australian beetles which inhabit
a wide range of habitats and include ladybirds, fireflies, weevils,
jewel beetles, water beetles and more. Hymenoptera
is an order containing bees, wasps and ants. They all build large nests
and live in large colonies with soldiers, workers and one breeding
couple. Other queens and male breeders only develop if conditions are
right to disperse to new colonies.

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Different Types of Insects - Bulldog Ant and Robber Fly
In Australia’s warm climate, many different types of insects species
have developed into real giants. Australia’s largest wasp is the
6.8cm-long Spider Wasp (Hemipepis
australasiae)
which is found in areas around southern Queensland and northern New
South Wales. Also in eastern Australia is
Australia’s largest weevil, the 6cm-long Giant Pine
Weevil
(Eurhamphus fasciculatus) in areas around Brisbane,
and the 6cm-long Colossus Earwig (Titanobalis
colossea), one of the heaviest earwigs in the world. Some
more
common species are Australia’s largest lacewing, the 15cm-long Antilon
Lacewing (Heoclisis fulva)
which is found in the northern half of Australia; Australia’s largest
ant and one of the largest ants in the world - the 3.6cm-long Bulldog
Ant (Myrmecia brevinoda) which lives
along the eastern
coast of Australia and gives you a painful bite; and Australia’s
largest fly, Robber Fly (Phellus
algae) with a
wingspan of 8cm which is found in South
Australia, southern Western
Australia and central
Queensland and New South Wales.

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Giant Burrowing Cockroach and other Giant Insects in
Australia
Australia’s largest cicada, the Double-drummer Cicada
(Thopha saccata) has a wingspan of 13cm and is found
along the
eastern coast of Australia. Cockroaches are generally large in
Australia, finding a 5cm-long in your kitchen is not uncommon, but the Giant
Burrowing Cockroach (Macropanesthia rhinoceros)
which
is found along the coast of Queensland and weighs 30g is the world’s
heaviest cockroach. A few giants are only found in Cape
York
and the tropical rainforests of
far north Queensland: the Dragonfly Petalua ingentissima
with a
wingpan of 15cm; Australia’s largest beetle Wallace’s
Longicorn
(Batocera wallacei) with a length of 8.5cm and
antennae-span of
40cm; and the 13cm-long Shield-backed Katyid
(Siliquofera
sp.), one of the world’s largest crickets. The largest stick
insect
is the Titan Stick Insect (Acrophylla
titan)
which is found all over the north-eastern half of Australia, and the
heaviest one is the Goliath Stick Insect (Eurycnema
goliath),
found in northern and eastern parts of Australia, which can weigh up to
30g. Australia has got many species of large butterflies, but the
largest is the Cairns Birdwing (Ornithoptera
priamus) with a wingspan of 18cm (in females) which is found
in north
Queensland.

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Facts
about Butterflies
and Moths in Australia
Butterflies and moths - some of the largest and most spectacular of the
different types of insects in Australia are members of the order Lepidoptera,
which in Australia consists of 20,816 species. Moths and butterflies
are basically the same thing except that moths most often lack the
cubbed antennae of butterflies, and they don’t always rest with their
wings upright as do butterflies. But what
do butterflies eat? Moths
and butterflies both eat nectar,
but butterflies are diurnal while moths (with a very few exceptions)
are nocturnal. This is why butterflies are attracted to and visit
plants
that are colourful, while the plants that rely on moths as pollinators
haven’t needed to develop colours for attraction - they are often white
but smell nice instead, particularly night time.

Types
of Moths in Australia
While moths generally tend to be grey, Australian moths are relatively
colourful – green, orange, blue and yellowish, but there are also
species that are grey or white. They belong to many families that
include the beautiful ghost moths, cup moths (Family Limacodidae),
burnets (Family Zygaenidae), pyralids, gum moths,
tiger moths
(Family Arctiidae) and hawk moths (Family Sphingidae).
The largest of Australian moths is Hercules Moth (Coscinocera
Hercules) with a wingspan of 270mm and 100mm-long
caterpillars - is
one of the largest moths in the world.

Different
Types
of Butterflies in Australia
The 400 species of Australian butterflies belong to different families
like skippers (Family Hesperiidae), swallowtails
(Family Papilionidae),
browns (Family Nymphalidae), whites (Family Pieridae)
and blues (Family Lycaenidae), and vary in sizes
from the small
Common Grass Yellow Butterflies (Eurema hecabe) to
the large,
already-mentioned Cairns Birdwings (Ornithoptera priamus),
and
the most beautiful Australian butterflies - Ulysses
Butterfly
(Papilio Ulysses), a large bright-blue butterfly
that is found
in tropical north Queensland.

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Insect
Facts - and Where
to See Different Types of Butterflies
It is easy to see butterflies and other different types of insects
everywhere in the wild, but some, like Ulysses Butterfly, are so quick
when flying in the air that you hardly manage to see it, let alone
taking photos. A good place to get close to Australian butterflies is
Kuranda Butterfly Sanctuary in Kuranda
north of Cairns
in far
north Queensland.

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